Humanity is having great difficulty with relationships right now.  Many of us are experiencing this on an individual level.  We think we're with the wrong partner, or that our partner is behaving poorly.  Rarely do we see it as a personal issue to which there's a solution.  However, if we look at this more deeply, we can begin to see the patterns in all of our relationships since birth.

Our relationships are our greatest teachers of inner wisdom.  They offer us chances over and over again to reflect on our ability to love unconditionally.  We have experienced many relationships in which there was an absence of unconditional love.  This includes our own relationship with ourselves.  Sometimes we offer love unconditionally to others and refuse giving it to ourselves. Other times we give it to ourselves and refuse to give unconditional positive regard to the other, whether that other is a Mother, a father, a partner, a child, or a friend.

Couples often have great difficulty sustaining the love that first brought them to the decision and experience of bonding.  We could think of the first experience of unconditional love with our partner as the promise of what's possible once we've both worked through our unconscious programming from childhood, teenage, and adult years of experience.
 
Rarely have we experienced the unconditional love of another on this planet.  From birth to present time, we have scars from people purposely or not so purposefully wounding our psyches.  Many times if not always we hold on to these hurts in our unconscious, and they arise only as we experience deep love from someone, especially a romantic partner.

Couples counseling is not always easy, and it's rarely simple.  By the time a couple has decided to come for therapy, there are many layers and many years of difficulties that need to be dealt with.  Often couples believe that a few sessions of counseling will fix them and they'll be able to be in love again.  That's rarely the case.  It takes hard work during sessions, great patience, and a strong desire and willingness to work things out and forgive the offenses of our partner and ourselves that moves couples toward resolution of difficulties.

Beyond that, working through difficult feelings and experiences, there is often great healing and a renewed desire to love and care for one another and the relationship itself.